25 For 25

by Various

  ‘How do you propose we do that?’ said Grendel.

  ‘Go through the city. Explore it and find out who’s here. Learn their strengths and weaknesses. Make no secret of where your allegiance lies and if you need to crack some heads open, then that’s fine too. Grendel, you know what to do?’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Grendel, with a gleam of anticipation in his eye. ‘I do indeed.’

  Honsou caught the look that passed between the Newborn and Ardaric Vaanes, relishing their confusion. It never did to have your underlings too familiar with your plans.

  ‘Now get out, I have research to do,’ said Honsou, lifting the book he had taken off Vaanes from the bed. ‘Amuse yourselves as you see fit until morning.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ said Grendel, drawing a long-bladed knife.

  Honsou was about to turn away from his subordinates when he saw the Newborn cock its head to one side and the inner light that lurked just beneath its borrowed skin pulse with a shimmering heartbeat. In the months they had fought together, Honsou recognised the warning.

  ‘Enemies are approaching,’ said the Newborn, answering Honsou’s unasked question.

  ‘What? How do you know?’ demanded Grendel.

  ‘I can smell the blood,’ said the Newborn.

  The ground before Honsou’s defensive wall was littered with bodies. Gunfire flashed from the towers and ramparts, a brutal curtain of fire that sawed through the ranks of flak-armoured warriors who hurled themselves without fear at the gates. Sudden darkness had fallen, as though a shroud of night had been cast over the promontory, and stuttering tongues of flame lit the night as the two forces tore at one another.

  The Newborn’s warning had come not a second too soon and Honsou had massed his warriors on the crude walls in time to see a host of screaming men emerge from the darkness towards them. They were an unlikely storming force, a ragged mix of human renegades of all shapes and sizes. Most wore iron masks or skull-faced helmets and their uniforms – such as they were – were little more than bloodstained rags stitched together like the Newborn’s skin.

  They came on in a howling mass, firing a bizarre mix of weapons at the defenders. Las-bolts and solid rounds smacked into the walls or from the ceramite plates of the Iron Warriors. What the attackers lacked in skill and tactical acumen, they made up for in sheer, visceral ferocity.

  It wasn’t nearly enough.

  Disciplined volleys barked again and again from the Iron Warriors and line after line of attackers was cut down. Their primitive armour was no match for the mass-reactive bolts of the defenders, each a miniature rocket that exploded within the chest cavity of its target.

  Heavy weapons on the towers carved bloody gouges in the attacking horde, but the carnage only seemed to spur them to new heights of fanaticism, as though the bloodshed were an end in itself.

  ‘Don’t these fools realise they’ll never get in?’ said Ardaric Vaanes as he calmly snapped off a shot that detonated within the bronze mask of a flag-waving maniac as he ran at the gate without even a weapon unsheathed.

  ‘They don’t seem to care,’ said Honsou, reloading his bolter. ‘This isn’t about getting in, it’s about letting us know that we’re being challenged.’

  ‘You reckon these are Uluvent’s men?’ said Grendel, clearly enjoying this one-sided slaughter. Grendel had allowed the enemy to reach his section of the walls before ordering his men to open fire, and Honsou saw the relish he took in such close-range killing.

  ‘Without a doubt,’ said Honsou.

  ‘He must have known they’d all get killed,’ pointed out Vaanes.

  ‘He didn’t care,’ said the Newborn, standing just behind Honsou’s right shoulder. Its unnatural flesh was still glowing and there was a hungry light in its eyes. ‘His god cares not from where the blood flows and neither does he. By throwing away the lives of these men, Pashtoq Uluvent is showing us how powerful he is. That he can afford to lose so many men and not care.’

  ‘Getting clever in your old age,’ said Grendel with a grin and slapped the arm of the Newborn. His champion flinched at Grendel’s touch and Honsou knew it detested the mohicaned warrior. Something to bear in mind if Grendel became a problem.

  The slaughter – it could not be called a battle – continued for another hour before the last shots faded. The attackers had not retreated and had fought to the last, their bodies spread like a carpet of ruptured flesh and blood before the Iron Warriors compound.

  The strange darkness that had come with the attack now lifted like the dawn and Honsou saw a lone figure threading his way through the field of corpses towards the fortress.

  Cadaras Grendel raised his bolter, but Vaanes reached out and lowered the weapon’s barrel.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Vaanes?’ snarled Grendel.

  ‘That’s not one of Uluvent’s men,’ said Vaanes. ‘You don’t want to kill this one.’

  ‘Shows what you know,’ said the scarred warrior, turning to Honsou for acknowledgement. Honsou gave a brief nod and turned to watch as the newcomer approached the gate without apparent fear of the many guns aimed at him.

  ‘Who is he?’ said Honsou. ‘Do you recognise him?’

  ‘No, but I know who he represents,’ said Vaanes, gesturing to the looming citadel that dominated the skyline.

  ‘Open the gates,’ ordered Honsou. ‘Let’s hear what he has to say.’

  Despite his earlier confidence, Honsou couldn’t help but feel apprehensive as he climbed the twisting, corkscrew stairs carved into the sheer sides of the rock face that led towards the mountainous citadel. The emissary led them, his sandaled feet seeking out the steps as surely as if he had trod them daily for a thousand years. For all Honsou knew, perhaps he had.

  Honsou had met the emissary, a nameless peon in the robes of a scribe, at the gate of his makeshift fortress where he was handed a scroll case of ebony inlaid with golden thorns. He removed the scroll, a single sheet of cartridge paper instead of the more melodramatic human skin he’d expected, and read the tight, mechanical-looking script written upon it before passing the scroll to Ardaric Vaanes.

  ‘Well?’ he’d said when Vaanes had read its contents.

  ‘We go,’ said Vaanes instantly. ‘When this world’s master summons you, it is death to refuse.’

  His message delivered, the emissary turned and led them through the squalid streets of the city towards the tallest peak, climbing steep stairs cut into the rocky flanks of the mountain. Honsou had brought Vaanes and the Newborn with him, leaving Grendel to finish the execution of the wounded attackers and keep the compound safe against further assaults.

  The climb was arduous, even to one whose muscles were enhanced with power armour, and many times Honsou thought he was set to plummet to his death until the Newborn helped steady him. Their route took them across treacherous chain bridges, along narrow ledges and though snaking tunnels that wound a labyrinthine passage through the depths of the mountain and avoided the fields of razor wire. Though he tried to memorise the route, Honsou soon found himself confounded by occluded passageways, switchbacks and the strange angles within the bowels of the fortress.

  On the few occasions they emerged onto the side of the mountain, Honsou saw how high they had climbed. Below them, the city shone like a bruised diamond, torches and cookfires dotting the mountainside like sunlight on quartz as the skies darkened to a sickly purple. Thousands upon thousands of warriors were gathered in makeshift camps throughout the city and Honsou knew that if he made the right moves, they could be his.

  Any army gathered from this place would be a patchwork force of differing fighting styles, races and temperaments, but it would be large and, above all, it would be powerful enough to achieve its objective. And if the books he had taken from the chained libraries of Khalan-Ghol gave up their secrets, he would have something of even greater value than mere warriors to drown the worlds of Ultramar in blood.

  The higher they climbed, the more Honsou felt his appre
ciation for the design of this fortress shift from grudging admiration to awe. It was constructed with all the cunning of the most devious military architect, yet eschewed the brutal functionality common to the Iron Warriors for a malicious spite in some of the more deadly traps.

  At last, they emerged within an enclosed esplanade lined with pillars and crowned with what could only be the outer hull plates of a spaceship. The metal was buckled and scored from multiple impacts, the sheeting blackened and curved where the intense heat of laser batteries had pounded the armour to destruction.

  A great, thorn-patterned gate stood open at the end of the esplanade and a hundred warriors in power armour lined the route they must take through it. Each of the warriors was armoured differently, a multitude of colours and designs, some so old they were the image of that worn by Honsou. Only one thing unified these warriors, a jagged red cross painted through the Chapter insignia worn on their left shoulder guard.

  The emissary led them down this gauntlet of warriors, and Honsou saw Salamanders, Night Lords, Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Flesh Tearers, Iron Hands and a dozen other Chapters. He noted with grim amusement that no Ultramarines made up these warriors’ numbers and doubted that any of Macragge’s finest would be found in this garrison.

  Beyond the gateway, the fortress became a gaudy palace, a golden wonder of fabulous, soaring design that was completely at odds with the external solemnity of its design. Honsou found the interior garish and vulgar, its ostentation the antithesis of his tastes, such as they were. This was not the palace of a warlord; it was the domain of a decadent egotist. Then again, he should not have been surprised, after all, wasn’t it his monstrous ego and megalomania that had brought the citadel’s builder low in the first place?

  At last they came to a set of gilded doors, taller than a warlord titan, which swung open in a smooth arc to reveal a grand throne room of milky white marble and gold. The sounds of voices and armoured bodies came from beyond and, as Honsou and his retinue followed the emissary through, they saw the towering form of a daemonic Battle Titan serving as the backdrop to a tall throne that sat on a raised dais at the far end of the chamber.

  A hundred captured battle flags hung from the vaulted ceiling and the chamber was thick with warriors of all sizes and descriptions.

  ‘I thought this summons was just for us,’ said Honsou.

  ‘What made you think that?’ replied Vaanes. ‘Did you think you were a special case?’

  Honsou ignored the venomous relish in Vaanes’s words and didn’t reply. He had thought the summons was for him and him alone, but saw how foolish that belief had been. This was the Skull Harvest and every warrior gathered here would be thinking that he alone would be the victor.

  He saw a profusion of horns, crimson helms, glittering axes and swords, alien creatures in segmented armour and a riotous profusion of standards, many depicting one of the glorious sigils of the Dark Gods.

  ‘Should we have brought a standard?’ hissed Honsou, leaning close to Ardaric Vaanes.

  ‘We could have, but it wouldn’t have impressed him.’

  ‘There is fear in this room,’ said the Newborn. ‘I can sense it flowing through this place like the currents of the warp.’

  Honsou nodded. Even he could sense the lurking undercurrent of unease that permeated the throne room. The throne itself was empty, a carved block of thorn-wrapped onyx that would surely dwarf any man who sat upon it, even a Space Marine.

  He turned as his instincts for danger warned him of threat and his hand snatched to his sword hilt as a looming shadow enveloped him.

  ‘You are Honsou?’ said a booming voice like the sound of tombstones colliding.

  ‘I am,’ he said, looking up into the furnace eyes of a warrior clad in vivid red battle plate that was scarred and burned with the fires of battle and which resembled the lined texture of exposed muscle. His shoulder guards were formed from an agglomerated mass of bones, upon which was carved the icon of a planet being devoured between a set of fanged jaws.

  Upon a heavily scored breastplate of fused ribs, Honsou saw a red skull branded over the insignia of an eight-pointed star and knew who stood before him. The warrior’s blazing eyes were set deep within a helmet fashioned from a skull surely taken from the largest greenskin imaginable, and they were fixed on Honsou in an expression of controlled rage.

  ‘Pashtoq Uluvent, I presume,’ said Honsou.

  ‘I am the Butcher of Formund, the bloodstorm of the night that takes the skulls of the blessed ones for the Master of the Brazen Throne,’ said the giant and Honsou smelled the odour of spoiled blood upon Uluvent’s armour.

  ‘What do you want?’ said Honsou. ‘Didn’t you lose enough men attacking my compound?’

  ‘Simple blood sacrifices,’ said Uluvent. ‘A statement of challenge.’

  ‘You let your men die just to issue a challenge?’ said Honsou, impressed despite himself.

  ‘They were nothing, fodder to show my displeasure. But Vosok Dall was a chosen warrior of my warband and his death must be avenged with yours.’

  ‘Many have tried to kill me,’ said Honsou, squaring his shoulders before the champion of the Blood God, ‘but none have succeeded, and they were a lot tougher than you.’

  Uluvent chuckled, the mirthless noise sounding as though it issued from a benighted cavern at the end of the world, and reached up to tap Honsou’s forehead. ‘When the Harvest begins, you and I shall meet on the field of battle and your mongrel skull will be mounted on my armour.’

  Before Honsou could reply, Pashtoq Uluvent turned and marched away. Honsou felt his anger threaten to get the better of him, and only quelled the urge to shoot Uluvent in the back with conscious effort.

  ‘It’ll be a cold day in the warp before that happens,’ he hissed as the Battle Titan’s warhorn let out a discordant bray of noise; part fanfare, part roar of belligerence. The harsh wall of noise echoed around the chamber, reverberating from the pillars and reaching into every warrior’s bones with its static-laced scrapcode.

  Honsou blinked as he saw that the throne at the foot of the Battle Titan was now occupied. Had it been occupied a moment ago? He would have sworn that it had been empty, but sat like a great king of old upon the onyx throne was a towering warrior in crimson armour edged in gold. A halo of blades wreathed his pallid, ashen face and his right arm was a monstrous claw with unsheathed blades that shimmered with dark energies.

  A great axe was clasped in this mighty king’s other hand and his merciless eyes swept the warriors assembled before him with a searching gaze that left no secret unknown to him. At his shoulder squatted a chittering, reptilian beast that wrapped its slimy flesh around the vents of the warrior’s backpack.

  The howl of the titan’s warhorn ceased abruptly and all eyes turned to the warrior king upon the onyx throne. Every champion in the room dropped to one knee at the sight of so mighty a warlord.

  Huron Blackheart.

  The Tyrant of Badab.

  At length the Tyrant spoke, his voice booming and powerful. A voice used to command. A voice that had convinced three Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes to side with him against their brothers. A voice belonging to a warrior who had survived the death of half his body and not only lived, but returned stronger and more deadly than ever.

  Though he tried not to be, Honsou couldn’t help but be impressed.

  ‘I see many hungry faces before me,’ said the Tyrant. ‘I see warlords and corsairs, mercenaries and outcasts, renegades and traitors. What you were before you came here does not interest me, all that matters in the Skull Harvest is who is the strongest.’

  Huron Blackheart rose to his feet and stepped from the dais to move amongst those who came before him. The loathsome creature at his shoulder hissed and spat, the pigments of its mottled hide running from spotted to scaled and back again in a heartbeat. Its eyes were black gems, devoid of expression, yet Honsou sensed malignant intelligence behind them.

  A warrior in the armour of the Astral Claw
s, the Tyrant’s former Chapter, followed behind Huron Blackheart and Honsou sensed a darkly radiant power within him, as though what lurked beneath the ceramite plates was something no longer wholly human.

  Accompanying this warrior was a tall woman of startling appearance, with features so thin as to be emaciated. Her dark hair was pulled severely back from her face and cascaded to her ankles. Golden flecks danced in her eyes and her emerald robes hung from her thin frame as though intended for someone more generously proportioned. She carried a heavy ebony staff topped with a horned skull. Honsou recognised a sorceress when he saw one.

  As Huron Blackheart made his way through the crowds of warriors, Honsou saw that the size of the man’s throne was not simply an exercise in vanity; he dwarfed even the mightiest of his supplicants.

  No wonder the piratical fleets that raided the shipping lanes around New Badab were the terror of the Imperium’s shipmasters. Blackheart’s reavers plagued the worlds of the Corpse-Emperor from the Tyrant’s bases scattered around the Maelstrom, bringing him plunder, slaves, weapons and, most importantly, ships.

  The Tyrant and his bodyguards moved through his throne room and the warriors gathered before him bowed and scraped. Honsou felt his lip curl in distaste.

  ‘They worship him like he was a god,’ he said.

  ‘On New Badab he might as well be,’ said Vaanes. ‘He has the power of life and death over everyone here.’

  ‘Not me, he doesn’t.’

  ‘Even you,’ promised Vaanes.

  ‘Then I’ll be sure to keep my thoughts to myself.’

  Vaanes chuckled. ‘That’ll be a first, but it doesn’t matter. That creature on his shoulder, the Hamadrya, is said to be able to see into the hearts of men and whisper their darkest thoughts in the Tyrant’s ear. Imperial assassins have tried to slay Blackheart for decades, but none have ever come close, the Hamadrya senses their thoughts long before they get near.’

  Honsou nodded at Vaanes’s words, watching the unseemly displays of fealty and obeisance made by the various warlords and corsair chieftains. He looked across the throne room and saw that Pashtoq Uluvent also kept himself aloof from such toadying, and his respect for the warrior went up a notch.